With CES sendoff, Microsoft insists it's still cool

We expected great things from Microsoft. After
the company announced that this would be its last keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show -- that
it would say goodbye to fifteen years of speeches at the annual
gadget-fest -- we assumed it would go out with a bang.

Instead, we were greeted with a bid for attention from a company
struggling to stay relevant in an industry increasingly infatuated
with newcomers like Facebook, Google, and Amazon.

Yes, Microsoft gave us a retrospective
of its keynote performances over the past 15 years -- a nice bit of
nostalgia -- but with a who's who of the tech industry waiting
intently to see what the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant has
planned for the coming year, the speech from CEO Steve Ballmer
failed to deliver.

Over the past decade, big-name companies are scaling back their
use of trade shows for major product release announcements. Apple
even departed Macworld, the show that grew up around its products
in particular. Apple instead hosts launch events at its own
Cupertino HQ, as well as its developer conference held in downtown
San Francisco. Google followed suit, now hosting its own events at
its Mountain View campus, while hosting its own developer
conference at the same San Francisco conference center.

Microsoft's continued participation at CES -- a trade show that
has been around for over forty years -- was somewhat analogous to
Microsoft's own position in the market at the moment: Out of touch.
Antiquated. Lacking innovation.

So it's only right that the company should step aside from CES.
But it could have done so with more style.

At least Microsoft wants to change. The company has rededicated
its efforts in mobile in
2011, fostering a strong partnership with Finnish mobile giant
Nokia, which will produce the next wave of Microsoft-powered mobile
devices. Or, as Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said on Monday, "the
first real Windows Phones."

The company's effort to change is exemplified by the user
interface that Windows Phone pioneered: The Metro UI. And Ballmer
certainly talked it up. But that was about it.

Based on Seattle's King County Metro system typeface, the Metro
UI includes bright, varied colors, interactive tile icons lining
menu screens in a live action mosaic, and a uniform, crisp font
selection. By most critical accounts (including ours), it's
gorgeous -- a truly impressive departure from lookalikes Android and iOS. It's the "heart and soul" of Windows
Phone, according to Ballmer says.

"You saw Metro in the phone, in Windows, in Xbox. it's
everywhere," Ballmer said. "Metro will drive the new magic across
all of our user experiences." As we've been reminded numerous times
now, the Metro UI will also spill over into the next iteration of
the Windows PC OS, Windows 8.

The UI has been hinted at and previewed too many times to count,
and during its keynote, Microsoft pulled back the curtain again
ever so slightly, showing the tiniest bit of the much-awaited
operating system's skin. For one thing, there's a clever
picture-based lock-screen, which unlocks based on touching
pre-determined areas of a pic of your choosing (though it sounds
silly, it's rather charming).

What's more, Windows 8 will run on both ARM
and X86 processors -- and Microsoft demoed the software using a
prototype Samsung tablet powered by NVidia's new Tegra 3 quad-core
chip. And finally -- and most compellingly -- every PC currently
running Windows 7 will be able to upgrade to Windows 8. (It's a
good thing, considering over half a billion Windows 7 licenses have
sold to date).

Still, we'll have to wait for more on the new OS -- Microsoft
says we'll see "the next milestone" in Windows 8 come late
February, then a launch to follow at a later (as yet unspecified)
date.

In the meantime, however, the company will try and jazz up PCs
by bringing some of its newest and most innovative technology to
them. The company's Kinect camera technology -- the popular, inexpensive
motion-sensitive camera that Microsoft has sold to accompany their
XBox gaming consoles -- will debut for Windows PCs on 1
February.

Like Metro, Ballmer said, Kinect is "a leading example of what
we like to call a natural user interface."

Bridging that gap makes sense. Xbox and Kinect have
been two of Microsoft's popular products, having sold over 66
million XBox consoles worldwide, and over 18 million Kinects since
its launch last year. It's brought the company back into the
innovative limelight, a space it has long since occupied.

But sadly, we're left wanting for more with this, Microsoft's
grand finale as the CES headliner. We wanted that Oprah moment,
that pop of surprise when a host pulls an ace from their sleeve. We
wanted our "one more thing."

Ballmer and company left it back in Washington, where the
company remains hard at work on the OS it hopes will change its
image in consumers' eyes and minds.

Instead, much like other exhibitors at CES press conferences on
Monday, Microsoft resorted to carting out celebrities like Ryan
Seacrest, and parlor tricks like a tweet-singing choral ensemble.
As for our "one more thing" -- it looks like we'll have to wait
till February.